Professor Maddox Barlowe
Maddox was born to a modest pureblood family in Manchester. Growing up with only sisters—his older sister Scarlet and his twin Cassidy—he took on the role of defender. It didn’t matter who started the quarrels his sisters got into; he was sure to step in and end them if it came to it. From an early age, his father instilled in him a sense of being a ‘real’ man, who protected women and especially his family, among other distinguished things. This, at times, led to a strained relationship between him and his father because of the overbearing expectations he placed on him.
These lessons never left him even as he grew. It led to some degree of trouble for him after he and Cassidy started Hogwarts, as he was always quick to defend his pouting other half. Soon, he was able to grow into his own. He mellowed out quite a bit as he realised that his sisters…and girls in general, were a lot of trouble. Should he follow his father’s instructions to the letter, he would never find peace. He began to focus on his own interests and was particularly exceptional in the areas of charms and transfiguration. This was fuelled by his desire to become an animagus.
The praise he received for his skills over the years led to complacency and arrogance on his part. He began to anticipate his own success and no longer believed he needed to exert himself in order to accomplish whatever he pursued. This decision came back to bite him when his animagus training turned into a complete disaster near the end of his 6th year. Not only did he botch the final steps, but he nearly lost his life in the process. The aftereffects proved permanent, cursing him to an unfortunate mixture of feline traits even while he remained human.
He became the laughingstock of his family and closest friends, who thought it fitting that the arrogant boy be humbled.
Ashamed of his botched transformation, Maddox refused to register with the ministry, despite several warnings to the contrary. The moment he graduated from Hogwarts, he began looking for internships in faraway places. He hoped to remove himself from the eyes of his mockers long enough to heal from the consequences of his actions.
His passion for creatures took him first to the jungles of South America, where he worked in conjunction with a team of researchers looking into a surge of reports from local muggles during an uptick in chupacabra sightings. From there, he was referred by a senior colleague impressed with his work to work on a small occamy reservation in India. The poaching of the creatures’ eggs for trade in black market potion sales had begun to put pressure on the local occamy population, and saw their numbers dwindling unsustainably. This time in his life saw him going on many dangerous missions. His days and nights sometimes comprised of fighting off persistent poaching groups who refused to be deterred and securing nesting sites. At the age of 26, he started hearing more talk of the dragon sanctuary that was opened over in Romania. Wanting a change of pace after five years of fighting poachers, he applied for an opening and began working there the following year.
That exhilarating, world-trotting time in his life came to a crushing end when Maddox received news from back home. Cassidy wasn’t doing well. She’d always been a sickly girl despite her fiery personality. He knew she’d been ill; she was always ill. Now, she was dying.
Without giving it a second’s thought, Maddox resigned from the sanctuary and returned home to care for her and her small children. He took with him the lessons he had learned from his time abroad. Maddox was no longer a man hiding from his shame. Somewhere in his whirlwind adventure, he’d made peace with what he had become, and the challenges of his job taught him how to deal with the problems of his personal life.
